an "in between"

In between the horse show that my granddaughters were in and my son and new daughter-in-law's wedding, I was still glittering pumpkin stems.  They really are glittery and quite pretty.  We made them for the shower and wedding table decorations.

I will put some other pictures of the festivities up soon...

and also of collage class today and our Halloween card exchange.  Just checkin' in!

Yesterday's class

My piece "The Hearing Heart" finished!  And more of Wednesday's class finished their wonderful pieces...

Barb 

Judy



 

Teri



 

And so, the first class of a new session, we distressed some papers and, here, Lora Lee has already begun her new idea.  This time, some of us will be working on altered board books and some on canvas or watercolor paper.

Outside the leaves are finally turning, the sun was out, and it was a beautiful day.

And I found a leaf with a gall attached.  The wasp, or whoever lived there, had gone and left it for me to find.  A perfect little bowl for my "Mouse Haus" that I am creating; a project with a collaborative group.

Pretty pumpkins!

Julie and I have been glittering some pretty pumpkin stems for our Fall festivities.

They are quite magical looking...

especially if you find some pumpkins with interesting or long stems.  Kind of Seuss-ical.

And if you saw my "purple queen" a few posts ago, you can now see that I am really "into" the characters on decks of cards...

This is my Halloween card this year.  The Queen witch is saying "Off with his head" (to the tune of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland") as she holds the King's head, dripping with blood, on a spear.  The Jacks in the background are ready for revenge with their weapons and the Jokers are dashing around doing their thing.  Love those Jokers!  A few black bats and a few black snakes add to the sinister feel, I think!  he he he!

The Halloween Tea

The second annual Halloween Tea at The Center last Friday was another smash hit!

Cackling witches served the spider cider...

And 100 wonderful witches came to celebrate the day...

My friend, Shirley, in her lovely attire...don't you love those shoes!

And a couple of special visitors decided to join in too...

And here are two of my favorite witches.

Joyce was the speaker, reading wonderful witches' poetry and...

Kassidy almost won the cackling contest!

Getting in the spirit of things...

Getting ready for the big Halloween Tea today at The Center, Lois had asked the art teachers and students to design mini pumpkins for the tea tables.  I decided on an owl.

She's all fluffy and ready for some of those goodies and tea!

Also, Wednesday in my class we did a fun project since it was the last week of this session.  I have been seeing all those crazy Halloween bottles in the stores and so decided we could make some of our own...

Gathering up some Halloween papers and images...oh, and I even had some vintage cheesecloth that my Mom used to use for making grape jelly.  I know she's smiling at that...or I hope she is...

mine is a bottle of "drool"... Ick!

So here, at class, Peggy is beginning hers.

and here are some of the finished ones.

Fun!

the purple queen

Last week in my collage, I gave an exercise for the class to work on as homework.  Making a list of words that you might like and a list of colors, cutting them up, and putting them in two separate little bags, you then pick one out of each bag without looking at them.  Create a collage from inspiration that you get from those two words.  No cheating!  And you have to use the first two words that you pick!  I picked mine in class and chose "purple" and "queen".  It's on a 9x12 watercolor paper.  I gave her a candle thinking maybe she can be a good birthday queen.  She's a queen of hearts, of course.  Fun!

This week's class

The homework for Wednesday's collage class was to create a collage in their sketchbooks using complementary colors.  I chose blue and orange.

Teri's is red and green.  So interesting!

Denise's orange and blue and...

Barb also chose those colors.  We were all thinking the same this week.

Then on to work on our collages.  Peggy's (above) is complete.  Beautiful!  I will give you their titles next week, when all are done.

Lora Lee also completed two beauties using some of the papers she made when we did monoprints, above and below.

Teri, working here: trying different subtle papers.

Barb's exciting background and now deciding on her focal point.

Judy's been traveling, but got inspiration going with those beautiful blue papers that she made at the beginning of this session.

Marge has two lovely nature-colored pieces going here.

Sandy is almost finished with her beautiful collage; using some of her own artwork, adding this wonderful border and now a few small additions.

Love Bernie's treatment of the figure in her piece; so lively and interesting!

And can't wait to see Karen's colorful "eye" finished.

Lora Lee beginning a new one!

Denise's very exciting abstract!

 

In between working on our collages, Marge showed us how to make our own stamps out of foam sheets.  Everyone loved that!

Happy Fall!